Recently, high-density mounting has been required for nonvolatile semiconductor memory devices as a result of a size reduction in portable electronic equipment. Accordingly, three-dimensional stack mounting in which semiconductor chips are stacked is drawing attention.
In such a three-dimensional memory device, signals are traditionally sent/received between chips by wire bonding. However, there is fear that a required number of wire bondings may not be permitted when a great number of chips need to be stacked in one package. Moreover, it is known that reflection of signals between wiring lines resulting from an inductor component of wires decreases the performance of an LSI.
To address this issue, there has been suggested a technique for forming a through-via that penetrates a substrate in a semiconductor chip, and a technique for forming a communication inductor element in a semiconductor chip.
However, a complicated manufacturing process is required for forming the through-via, so that there are problems of increased manufacturing costs and of the difficulty of improving quality. Another problem is that the area of the semiconductor chip increases if the inductor element is formed in the semiconductor chip.